We are assured that Vincent Tan has withdrawn his offer of an extra bonus to avoid relegation — the Cardiff squad were startled to have £3.7 million dangled before them in their Park Lane hotel prior to Sunday’s 1-0 defeat at Tottenham — after discovering that it breached Premier League rules.

And we are happy to accept that, in the increasingly unlikely event of the club staying up, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s players will receive only what was put in their contracts before the season got under way.

However, some questions linger in the wake of an episode reminiscent of that described in a 2005 autobiography by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who said Roman Abramovich had promised Chelsea players an extra £50,000 each amid the dressing-room euphoria created by their Champions League quarter-final victory over Arsenal’s so-called “Invincibles’’. The Premier League investigated and found no case to answer on that occasion.

The obvious query would be: how often does this sort of thing happen without our finding out? We take our teams’ swings of form at face value.

But perhaps we are naïve in an age of big talk and loadsamoney ownership.

So would we have heard about Tan’s offer but for the politics at Cardiff, a club still in turmoil caused by Malky Mackay’s sacking and subsequent replacement with Solskjaer?

Another point, though, concerns the League’s own responsibilities and, in particular, the procedure formerly known as the fit and proper persons test.

Shouldn’t an intending owner and his principal executives have to sit it, like a driving test, before being allowed to purchase a club, so that, if such a breach as apparently took place on Sunday is discovered, there is no defence of ignorance?